It’s Saturday or Sunday morning. You wake up abruptly and look at the clock, it’s anywhere between 5 and 7am. Last night is a haze. Your head is pounding, your throat is dry and the room is spinning.
Your brain scrambles to remember what the heck happened last night. You start to panic. Your chest tightens, your brain races and the room keeps spinning. Anxiety sets in.
Every time you experience it you wonder if the fun of the night before was really worth it. You wonder if you're just overreacting. Then you think it's just the alcohol making it's way out of your system. But, hangover anxiety is real. It's actually a thing, and it's something a lot of us have experienced.
Here are the emotional stages of going through hangover anxiety - or, as I like to call it, 'hangxiety'.
1. What the heck did I say last night?
You wake up and immediately think "how did I embarrass myself last night?" Then you mentally run through everything you said. You think about every conversation you had (even though you can't really remember them). You think about all of the people you spoke to. You cringe. And if you do remember something you let slip - here's your reaction: